The Only Reading List You'll Ever Need

If you've already blown all those years on higher learning, well, you still won't Find a better set of books for your own shelf.

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Oh, sure, you could spend 12 years in school, four in college, and two more in grad school and probably end up smarter than the average bear. Or you could take a couple of months and read these ten volumes, a perfect, pleasant, popular representation of the entire canon of Western thought according to us, the erudite editors of Esquire. If you've already blown all those years on higher learning, well, you still won't Find a better set of books for your own shelf.

HISTORYA History of the English-Speaking Peoples, by Winston Churchill "By the end of 1648 it was all over. Cromwell was Dictator. The Royalists were crushed; Parliament was a tool; the Constitution was a Figment; the Scots were rebuffed, the Welsh back in their mountains; the Fleet was reorganised, London overawed. King Charles, at Carisbrooke Castle, was left to pay the bill. It was mortal."

ECONOMICS Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country, by William Greider "The prudential wisdom inherited from the past--a grandfather's old-fashioned warning to save for the future and avoid debt--was turned upside down. Smart young consumers now did the opposite. The overall effect was neither irrational nor antisocial. What grandfather did not understand was that borrowing and buying drove the American economy."

ART American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, by Robert Hughes "The artist who really seemed to fulFill the 'existential' model of the day was Jackson Pollock, in life and in death, and through the processes of his art. He painted riskily, just on the edge of control. He drank like a Fish, couldn't contain his internal violence and sexual insecurities, and died in 1956 at the age of 44 like a puffy, mean James Dean, in a big American car with two girls in it, neither of them being his long-suffering wife, the painter Lee Krasner."

TRAVEL U. S. Army Survival Manual "Wait for the beaver to come on land, then club it, drop-kick it, hit it with a rock, or catch it by the tail. It is a sturdy animal, so if you catch it by the tail, swing it in a pendulum motion until it begins to relax, then swing it against a tree or the ground or use a noose to kill it."

PHILOSOPHY The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, by Thomas Lynch "And while it may be that we assign more equipment or more importance to deaths that create themselves in places with initials--ICU being somehow better than Greenbriar Convalescent Home--it is also true that the dead don't care. . . . This loss of interest is, in fact, one of the First sure signs that something serious is about to happen. The next thing is that they quit breathing. . . . A gunshot wound to the chest or a shock and trauma will get more ink than a CVA or ASHD, but no cause of death is any less permanent than the other. Any one will do. The dead don't care."

GASTRONOMY The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, by Marcella Hazan "In the relationship of its parts, the pattern of a complete Italian meal is very like that of a civilized life. No dish overwhelms another, either in quantity or in Flavor, each leaves room for new appeals to the eye and palate, each fresh sensation of taste, color, and texture interlaces a lingering recollection of the last. To make time to eat as Italians still do is to share in their inexhaustible gift of making art out of life."

SPORTS The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and John Underwood "Your weight should be balanced, distributed evenly on both feet and slightly forward on the balls of the feet with the knees bent and Flexible. If you insist on resting back on your heels, Find another occupation."

STYLE From Russia with Love, by Ian Fleming "The man had taken off his mackintosh. He was wearing an old reddish-brown tweed coat with his Flannel trousers, a pale yellow Viyella summer shirt, and the dark blue and red zig-zagged tie of the Royal Engineers. It was tied with a Windsor knot. Bond mistrusted anyone who tied his tie with a Windsor knot. It showed too much vanity. It was often the mark of a cad."

HUSBANDRY Rodale's Book of Practical Formulas "Low humidity is best for candle-making."

Peekaboob! If you really want to know it all but are afraid to ask, the last book on your list is Peek: Photographs from the Kinsey Institute (Arena Editions, $60). It seems the pioneering sex researcher, while studying what was going on in America's bedrooms, also gathered about 75,000 sexual and erotic images. The book, due out this month, features 125 pictures--including the somewhat puzzling photo here--from Alfred C. Kinsey's extensive collection, which was previously inaccessible to the general public.